NHL Power Rankings: Team Rankings 2025

For weeks, I’ve opened every power rankings with “the regular season is drawing to a close” or “the playoffs are almost here.” But now I get to say the regular season is finally mostly officially over. 

Yes, there’s one more day left, but all of the playoff appearances are set. There are no longer the dark horse teams we all convinced ourselves had a shot at making the postseason. 

The NHL is set to drop the puck on the opening round of the postseason on Saturday night. But before those first-round series begin, let’s take stock, once more, of which teams are pretenders and contenders in the NHL. 

Here are the updated power rankings for Stanley Cup contenders as of April 17. 

NHL Power Rankings 2025

1. Jets

The Winnipeg Jets locked up the Presidents’ Trophy earlier this week, vanquishing a push from the Washington Capitals. 

NHL fans should know that winning that trophy is usually more of a bad thing than a good thing. Since the trophy debuted in 1986, only seven teams have gone on to win the Stanley Cup. Compared to the NBA, the first overall seed in that league has won the championship 24 times in the same period. 

As history suggests, Winnipeg could get bounced in the playoffs too early but reach more success as a mid to low seed in the next couple of years. 

But the Presidents’ Trophy is still very impressive for a Winnipeg Jets franchise that hasn’t accomplished much in its history. 

They take back the number one spot in the rankings because of that Presidents’ Trophy win and their 7-3-0 record over their last ten games, one of the best L10 records in the league.

Winnipeg will face off against another team that finished the season red-hot in the St. Louis Blues in the first round. 

2. Maple Leafs

Suddenly, the Toronto Maple Leafs have rounded into shape as a legit contender in the Eastern Conference. 

Given their forward core, Toronto is a team that’ll always be viewed as a contender, but they accomplished something big this year by taking the Florida Panthers’ spot as the Atlantic Division winner. 

They closed out their regular season strong with a four-game winning streak. They’ve also drawn a relatively easy first-round opponent in the Ottawa Senators, who, outside of some potential Battle of Ontario fireworks, should be a good playoff warmup for the Leafs. 

With no Bruins boogeyman to rain on their parade this playoffs, they could be looking at their first Stanley Cup appearance for the first time since 1967. 

3. Oilers

It’s apt that the top three teams this week are all from Canada because this really feels like the year that a team from The Great North could win it all, and maybe it’s their prodigal son, Connor McDavid, who gets it done. 

Despite being the three-seed in the Pacific Division, the Oilers are one of the league’s top contenders, and they seem to have kind of figured their stuff out after an up-and-down stretch in the dog days of the season. They went 7-3-0 in their last ten games of the season. 

Speaking of McDavid, he grabbed his 100th point in Edmonton’s 3-0 win over San Jose on Wednesday, making this his eighth career season at that point mark. 

Their biggest hole on the ice will be goaltending in these playoffs. But while Stuart Skinner is far from elite, his play has moved into the middle of the pack in the league. He posted a 2.81 GAA and a .896 save percentage this season.

The Oilers should be able to get by with average goaltending assuming McDavid and Draisaitl are healthy in the playoffs. They’ll face off against the Los Angeles Kings once again in the first round, the fourth time the two teams have met in the playoffs in recent years.

7. Panthers 

Speaking of teams that have become playoff buddies in recent years, the Florida Panthers will be facing off against Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round. These two last met on Tuesday where Florida fell 5-1 in their last game of the regular season. 

It would’ve been hard to see this coming a few months ago but the Panthers have gone from being a prohibitive favorite to having near even odds (-115) in their first round matchup. 

The fate of the team hangs with Matthew Tkachuk who hasn’t been on the ice since the Four Nations tournament in February. In his absence the Panthers have a slightly above .500 record at 13-11-1. Head coach Paul Maurice said that he expects Tkachuk to return at some point in the first round if not in Game 1. 

Assuming Tkahuck is close to 100% when he returns, the Panthers will become favorites again. But, if not, the team hasn’t shown it’s been able to do all that well without him contributing. 

This could be an opportunity for a rival in Tampa Bay to get one over on a team that’s beaten them up for the last few years.

11. Stars

The Dallas Stars are currently the co-odds favorite with Florida to win the Stanley Cup on BetMGM (+750) but they finished the season with a poor stretch of hockey. 

Some of that could potentially be attributed to the mental factor of a team that knew they had a playoff spot locked up but also knew they probably couldn’t get past Winnipeg to win their division. 

Regardless of why it happened, a seven-game losing streak to finish the regular season is not the way you want to enter into the playoffs. The losing streak was capped off with an embarrassing 5-1 loss to the bottom-feeding Nashville Predators on Wednesday night. 

The strategy of resting guys to promote playoff health didn’t even work for Dallas given that star forward Jason Robertson took a lower body injury in that Wednesday loss. 

The Stars could still be a strong contender for the cup but their odds of getting past the Colorado Avalanche in Round 1 have fallen to +125 on BetMGM. 

14. Canadiens

A team with the most titles in a league rarely becomes an easy-to-root-for underdog, but that’s what the youthful Montreal Canadiens are this postseason. 

They held onto the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference, fending off the Columbus Blue Jackets, who made a late push to get in as the season drew to a close. 

Now they get the honor of going up against the juggernaut 111-point Washington Capitals in the first round, which will be an incredibly steep hill to climb for Montreal. 

But, if we’re applying the same Presidents’ Trophy curse thinking to the Capitals, maybe the Canadiens have more of a shot than the betting odds suggest — they’re currently +230 to win the series. 

I could see this series going one of two ways: the Capitals demolish them in a four-to-five-game series win, or the Canadiens make it interesting and push the veteran-laden team to a seventh game. Either way, this should be a fun clash of an old team meeting an up-and-comer.